


Can't Have Nice Things

by a_xmasmurder



Series: Bucky Barnes Finds a Friend [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Hydra (Marvel), Injury, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress, Sneak Attack, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-08
Updated: 2015-09-08
Packaged: 2018-04-19 17:04:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4754210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_xmasmurder/pseuds/a_xmasmurder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nightmare in Bedford-Stuyvesant - Bucky has one night in with the kids and all hell breaks loose.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Can't Have Nice Things

**Author's Note:**

> Heed warning on this one - it's bloody. 
> 
> Little Shit has grown up, and she's definitely a Maine Coon.
> 
>  

There’s blood on his hands.

It’s the first thing Bucky notices when he opens his eyes.

“Shit.” The word comes out on a breathless gasp. He realizes he’s been holding his breath. He gulps breath after breath, blinking at the lights surrounding him. He can’t trust his vision. His peripheral vision is muddled color and brightness; the only thing he can focus on is his hands, which are covered in dark red blood. The sight sets his other senses even further on edge, though they don’t seem to be working very well either. Everything smells like copper and death, and there’s a slight buzzing noise that can be coming from anywhere. Hell, it can be coming from his head. It sounds to him like the headpiece of the ‘wiping’ machine they used on him lowering down. He squeezes his eyes shut and fists his sticky hands in his hair. He feels tears drip down his hot cheeks.

“Shit. Get outta my head, please...” His voice leaves his lips in a thin whine, defeated and afraid.

There’s a moment of almost overwhelming something. Panic, maybe. He doesn’t know, but just like that there’s a long shard of glass in his flesh hand. He’s gripping it hard enough for it to cut into his fingers and palm. He’s ready to fight, but he doesn’t know what he’s going to fight. No one’s told him what to fight. He doesn’t have a mission. He tears at his hair with his other hand and hisses as pain rips through his skull. “Get out of my head, damn you!”

Fresh blood rolls down both arms and plips onto the tile at his hip.

Tile. Cold, hard tile. How did he get in here? Where _is_ here?

He’s confused. He doesn’t know what happened, he doesn’t know where he is, he doesn’t know anything other than something happened. Another surge of icy fear sears his veins, rooting him to the spot instead of forcing him to get up and assess whatever the hell it was. Maybe it was a dream and he just undid months of therapy by destroying everything. Maybe he’s dreaming right now and he will wake up and everything will be fine and he can go cry into his damned omlette.

Or maybe he’s fully awake, living in a nightmare world where he just killed everyone.

He blinks again, more tears running down his face. “No.” He gasps and stares at the blood-dulled metallic glass in his hand. That can’t be what happened. He’s stronger than that. He shouldn’t be hiding. _Run an assessment. Don’t let your emotions get to you. Get your ass into gear, Barnes! Start small. The glass in your hand is glass from a mirror. Let go of it, it’s hurting you._ He drops the shard and stares at his hands again as the world slowly starts coming back into focus. His operational mind is taking over. The paralyzing fear is fading. _Look at your hands._ His knuckles are split and swollen on his right hand. His left hand is shiny with blood, and as he inspects it he sees there’s skin in between the plates. _So it’s real. There was a fight, somehow. Now that you know where the blood came from, figure out where the hell you are._ He looks up. He’s in the bathroom. _Tile makes sense now, don’t it?_ His eyes slide past the shower stall, the frosted glass door shattered right out of the frame and a dark-dressed man half inside. There’s a pile of vomit on the bathmat in front of the porcelain toilet. He must not have made it before his stomach heaved up its contents. But why did he throw up? And where the hell did the man come from?

With care to avoid the glass littering the tile, he stumbles to his bare feet and turns around. The bathroom mirror above the sink is intact, but the image that it reflects is straight out of the horror films Clint loves to watch. “Oh.” His wide blue eyes blink out of a visage of red. His hair is stringy with gelled blood, making the strands cling to his face. “Holy shit. Holy _shit_.” He can feel the panic starting to bubble in his chest again, constricting his heart and lungs into a ball. “Jesus _Christ_ , what the hell happened?” His hands tighten on the counter, his right creaking painfully. Fuck, he’s a mess. Breathing through the panic, he takes a tally of his injuries. His forehead’s split open, blood sluggishly leaking from the gash. He can see wet bone and off-color fatty tissue when he leans into his reflection. Bruises and scrapes festoon his face, soon to disappear. But that gash will stay for a while. There’s a flap of scalp pulling away from the top of his head, too, which is why his hair is soaked and why it hurt so badly to pull his hair.

There was a fight. There had to have been. But if the bathroom mirror hadn’t been broken, what had been? There’s no way the bathroom had been the only venue of battle. His mind goes back to the shard of glass he’d grabbed in a fit of self-defense. _There’s more than one mirror, obviously._

He turns from the mirror, and his head spins. He gags, his throat burning with bile. _Head injury, asshole. Don’t close your eyes again, just keep moving._ He takes a step towards the oddly angled door. Another step. It takes one more step for his self-preservation instinct to kick in. With a muttered curse, he turns unsteadily to the man in the shower. He drops to his knees, trusting his jeans to block the worst of the glass, and sticks his fingers against the man’s throat. Fifteen seconds. No pulse. Dead.

He’d killed the man.

_The man’s no longer a threat. Room cleared. Move on._

He pushes away from the sink and staggers out of the room, down the hall to the main room of what he now recognizes as his boyfriend’s Bed-Stuy apartment. It’s no longer truly recognizable, though, not with the complete destruction wrought upon it. His head swivels, methodically taking in each motionless body in turn, cataloguing the damage. He gulps in another mouthful of air before he hits the wood floor from a fit of dizziness. Sharp sensations jolt through his knees, and he looks down at the glittering glass shards scattered on the muted brown expanse. The mirror next to the television, then. That’s what had been shattered. He looks at the wall. Yeah, the television’s shot to hell, too. Literally.

The memories, short term and vivid, slam into him like a train run off the rails.

_He’s sitting on the couch in Clint’s flophouse apartment while the ‘official’ Avengers are off on a mission to who knows where, watching a nature documentary with Little Shit on his shoulder and Lucky stretched on his lap. Lucky has pizza farts, so he pushes the one-eyed mutt off the couch and reaches for the remote. A bullet slams into his back, right through the inner wall. He hits the ground as the whole wall shakes with impacts, taking cover as his back burns from the wound. A moment of silence, then the door blows inwards._

He looks at the door. It is warped in a way that tells him that whomever attacked him had C4 or the equivalent.

_He doesn’t have weapons, not on him. He left the knives in his duffle on the bed. It was supposed to be a peaceful respite from battle. Supposed to be. He scrambles to his feet and piledrives the first man that runs through the door, slamming him against the doorjamb. Beside him, Lucky latches onto a gunman’s arm and rips his head back and forth, powerful jaws tearing skin. Lucky’s victim screams, and he drives his metal fist into the screamer’s face as he throttles the first man with his other hand._

He remembers screaming at Lucky.

_“Down! Leave it!” He’s caught from behind by a bastard much taller than he. Sucks to be them. He widens his stance and flips them into the other two gaining entry. “Go, Lucky! Go to the back!” He gasps as a fist is driven into his gut. He can’t worry about the animals right now. He grapples with a new one, someone as fast as him. A shock of blond hair flashes, and for one sick second he thinks Hydra’s flipped his Stevie._

That thought makes him gag up more bile.

_It’s not Steve, the face is wrong, and he quickly snaps the assailant’s neck. If they are attacking him like this, then they need to be eliminated. He makes short work of two more before he’s hit on the head so hard he browns out. His limbs stop working, his hearing buzzes and his vision flips between working and not working. Someone jabs him with a syringe, and he explodes into survival mode._

And that’s all he can remember. It’s like his brain shut down when he went berserk. He has no idea what happened between then and when he finally came back to himself on the bathroom floor.

It’s terrifying.

Bucky collapses back on his ass despite the glass shards and chances a horrifying heartbreak. “Lucky, buddy? Little one?” He calls for the animals. He calls for his kitten, that has grown into a huge cat, and he calls for the closest thing Clint will have to a child. If they don’t come to him…

The buzzing on the kitchen counter finally registers with him. He gets to his feet, still unsteady from what he’s now certain is a nightmare of a concussion, and snatches his cell phone up and swipes at it, leaving smears of blood over the screen. “Barnes.” He keeps his gaze moving, looking for the animals. No sign of them, not one peep.

“Where have you been, dude?” Clint sounds happy and exhausted. “Been calling for the past hour. Thought Little Shit smothered you to death!”

His breath shudders out on a barely-concealed sob. Tears roll down his cheeks once more, but he keeps his voice from wavering. “We have a situation.”

He can hear his lover moving through the Quinjet, probably to the back, before he speaks again. “What sort of situation, Bucky?”

He waves his metal hand, even though Clint can’t see him. “Got attacked.” He swallows, and the waver is there. “I don’t know where they are.”

“Where who are?” Clint is all business. Bucky doesn’t know how to respond.

“The.” He swallows again, gulps some air, and pushes through the horror in his head to grip onto his colder, more clinical side. “The animals. I don’t know where they are.” He feels like he’s going to throw up again, and he can’t breathe. Everything’s blurry. He’s cold. “I’m in bad shape, and I don’t know if they are even alive.” 

The world shuts off.

He opens his eyes again to Clint shouting at him over their connection. He doesn’t remember passing out, but it’s obvious. And good Lord, his head is throbbing. It occurs to him after he stares at the low end table for a minute that he probably hit his head again. _Christ, I'm turning into Clint, just watch._ He flails his hand and grabs the cell on the fifth try. “Yeah! Yeah, I’m here. Sorry, passed out on you.”

Clint squawks, a bad sound from the normally composed man, and suddenly Bucky’s talking to Sam instead. “Dude, don’t do that again. Barton is freaking out on a whole new level. Steve’s talking him down from putting on Tony’s suit and flying to you.”

“Yeah, don’t let him do that. He can't fly that thing without going face first into a wall.” He groans. “I’m a mess. There had to be at least ten of them. I don’t remember the whole fight.” The fact he’s speaking in full sentences is scaring him. “Is it normal to knock your brain back into alignment? Because I’m making more sense to myself with more head trauma than I had before.”

“You are turning into Clint.”

“That’s what I said.” He takes a breath, finds it painful but easier than before, too. “To myself. I said it to myself. Everything’s easier on the floor.”

“Might have panicked after the fight.” Sam’s making sense. What makes more sense is how warm his right side and shoulder are. He turns his head and gets a faceful of orange Maine Coon fur. “Oh, christ above, thank you.” He nuzzles into Little Shit’s side, and she purrs and kneads into his blood-stiff t-shirt. At his side, Lucky whines and whines and nudges at the phone he no longer has attached to his ear. He lifts it again. “Tell Clint the animals are fine, but his boyfriend needs a new brain.”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself? We are on the roof. He’s already down the ramp. Vehicles outside look like Hydra, buddy.” Sam is giving a play-by-play. “One of his neighbors is on the roof now. I can hear over the com that Lucky ran to her apartment and howled until she let him in. She took cover until the worst was over, then walked in to...well, you.”

He laughs, which hurts his head. “Shouldn’t laugh, but shit. Haven’t met the neighbors. She saying a crazy man is in his apartment?”

“She’s saying you looked crazy, yeah.”

“Sweet.” He can hear Clint now, running down the hall. “In here!” The shout hurts his head even worse. He sets the phone down when Clint comes into view, looking horrible. “Right here, babe. Got an Advil?”

Clint snorts a jittery laugh and slides to his knees next to him. “Bucky, who do I have to kill from long distances? Actually, not long distances, I'll kill them up close and personal.”

“Think I got most of ‘em.” The tiredness is coming back with a vengeance. “But you can start with me. I sort of destroyed your place.”

“Naw. Not the first time it’s happened.” Clint grins, wet eyes shining. “Thanks for not blowing it completely up. And, uh. Thanks for surviving.” A single tear drips onto Bucky's cheek, fallen from Clint’s eye, and he reaches up to wipe away his Clinty-Clint’s sadness. His arm doesn’t quite make it before the world goes black again.

This time, he know exactly where he’s at. He fists both hands in the hospital sheets and groans. “Damn it all.”

“And you are staying here until the doc clears you.” Steve is at his side, a worn copy of The Hunt for Red October in his hands. Sam’s iPod is hooked up, playing something that sounds like it came straight from the Appalachians or the Ozarks. “So at least a week.”

“Thrilling.” He rolls his tongue around in his mouth. “Gross. Drink?”

Steve holds the glass while he drinks, and he’s fine with that. “Better?”

“Much.” He blinks at the ceiling. “How bad?”

“Other than the Cat 5 hurricane that happened to your head when you got clobbered with a baseball bat and then knocked yourself out on the coffee table, a few broken ribs and a dozen missing plates on your arm? Surprisingly little. But your brain is scrambled right now." Steve pauses. "I’m shocked you remember your name.”

He understands why Steve says this, and why he sounds worried, even while attempting some dark humor. He grins. “What’s my mission?”

Steve snorts. “Your mission is to stay in this hospital bed and heal. Clint’s working on getting your children in here as therapy animals.”

His grin softens into a warm smile for Steve. “Guess they are our children, huh?”

Steve’s brows pop up, and he nods. “Seeing as you both freaked out when you couldn’t find them?”

He winces. “Yeah. Yeah.” He nods, then squeezes his eyes shut. “Ow.”

“You are. You are turning into Clint Barton.” Steve sounds horrified.

He grins. “Stevie-Steve!”

“No.”

“Aww, Steve, no!”

“Shut up.”

“Be nice to me, my concussion has a concussion.”

Steve pushes to his feet. “And that is my cue to leave.”

He turns his head, and there’s Clint in the doorway, Little Shit wriggling in his arms and Lucky on a leash at his feet. “Hiya, babe!”

“Hiya!” Clint grins. “Did you know that Lucky actually does commands? He sat and shook hands and rolled over, all for nothing!”

His mind rolled back to the desperate scream of “Leave it!”. “Yeah. He’s a good listener.” He holds out his hands, overlapped with I.V. lines and pulse ox reader. “C’mere, Little Shit. Come to Daddy.”

Little Shit yowls and leaps onto the bed, bypassing his hands to rub up against his face and lick worriedly at his heavily-bandaged forehead. Amid the happy whimpers and yowling and Clint’s laughter, he sees Steve bow out and close the door behind him.


End file.
